Senescence, the Last Half of Life

by G. Stanley Hall

In his later discourses he tells us that although naturally of a very choleric disposition he entirely subdued it. He corrects the notion that the old must eat much to keep their bodies warm; says as old age is a disease we must eat less, as we do when ill; refutes the maxim “a short life and a merry one” and the fallacy that one cannot much prolong or shorten life by regimen; tells us exactly what foods he prefers—soup, eggs, mutton, fowl, fish, etc. At ninety-one he says, “The more my years multiply, the more my strength also increases,” and he preaches an earthly paradise after the age of eighty; while at ninety-five he writes that all his faculties “are in a condition as perfect as ever they were; my mind is more than ever keen and clear, my judgment sound, my memory tenacious, my heart full of life,” and his voice so strong that he has to sing aloud his morning and evening prayers. He enjoys two lives at the same time, one earthly and the other heavenly by anticipation.

As Cornaro advanced in years he grew very proud of his age, and his four discourses give us the impression that regimen and hygiene were his true religion, although he was very pious according to the standards of his age. His diet, the houses he built to live in for each season, his charities, the public works he instituted, and even the friends he cultivated, like everything else he said and did, were determined largely by what he thought were their effects upon his physical and mental health. No young man or young woman was ever prouder of his youth than he of his age. He gloried in it as manhood and womanhood do in their prime, and no evangelist was more intent on convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment than he was in exhorting men to change their mode of life to make it more sane, temperate, and abstemious—and that in a day and land when gluttony and riotous living were rife. For him a feast, rich repast, or a formal dinner was suicidal; and so were late hours, irregularities, excitement, and every form and degree of excess. So superior is senescence to all the other stages of life that he believed men should be dominated from the first by the desire to attain it as the supreme mundane felicity, because no one can be truly happy but the old. His mission was evidently to be the apostle of senescence.

True, he repeats himself, is often very platitudinous, no doubt, like most old men, greatly overestimates his powers, and if a poor and ignorant man would have been, very likely, a tedious old dotard. But as it is, his treatment of the problem of life is of great and lasting significance.

Lord Bacon[73] was evidently influenced by Cornaro, as he in turn was by the abstemious practices of monks and ascetics. Among the very practical suggestions of his paper we strike many quotations that have become familiar to all—Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark, and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other; since life is short and art is long, our chiefest aim should be to perfect the arts, and the greatest of them all is that of long life. Diet receives chief consideration. Bacon seems almost to believe that the ancients acquired a mode of putting off old age to a degree that has now become a lost art “through man’s negligence.” He stresses the power of the “spirits” and its waxing green again as the most ready and compendious way to long life but tells us that it may be in excess or in defect as, indeed, may every other activity; while the middle or moderate way is always to be sought. He discourses on the necessity of sufficient but not too much exercise, which must never be taken if the stomach is either too full or too empty. “Many dishes have caused many diseases,” and many medicines have caused few cures. “Emaciating diseases, afterwards well cured, have advanced many in the way of long life for they yield new juice, the old being consumed, and to recover from a sickness is to renew youth. Therefore, it were good to make some artificial diseases, which is done by strict and emaciating diets.”

Sleep is an aid to nourishment and it is especially important that in sleeping the body always be warm. Sleep is nothing but the reception and retirement of the living spirit into itself. We must also be cheerful in relation to both sleep and eating and he has many admonitions upon the advantages of pure air, the right affection, hope not too often frustrated, and especially a sense of progress, for most who live long have felt themselves advancing. Old men should dwell upon their childhood and youth, for this means rejuvenation. Hence association of the old with others whom they knew when young is most helpful. Habits, customs, and even diet, must be changed, but not too often or too much. One must constantly observe and study the effect upon himself of all the items of regimen. Grief, depression, excessive fear, lack of patience, are passions that feed upon and age the body. Each must acquire a wisdom “beyond the rules of physic; a man’s own observation, what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health, and with regard to many things he must wisely and rightly decide whether or not they are good or bad for him, and that independently of all precepts and advice.”

Thus in his quaint style, and for reasons most of which science of to-day would utterly discard, he had the sagacity to reach many of the conclusions that are quite abreast of and in conformity with the most practical results of modern hygiene.

Addison,[74] avowedly more or less inspired by Cornaro, after condemning the prevailing gluttony says, “For my part, when I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dyspepsias, fevers and lethargies, and other distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes.” He delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish—herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of the third. Man alone falls upon everything that comes in his way. “Not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or mushroom escapes him.” Hence he advises that we make our whole repast out of one dish and that we avoid all artificial provocatives, which create false appetites. He advises, too, that since this rule is so hard, “every man should have his days of abstinence according as his constitution will permit. These are great reliefs to nature as they qualify her for struggling with hunger and thirst and give her an opportunity of extricating herself from her oppressions. Besides that, abstinence will oftentimes kill a sickness in embryo and destroy the first seeds of an indisposition.” He then quotes the temperateness of Socrates, which enabled him to survive the great plague. He finds that many ancient sages and later philosophers developed a regimen so unique that “one would think the life of a philosopher and the life of a man were of two different dates.”

Robert Burton[75] thinks old age inherently melancholy, for “being cold and dry and of the same quality as melancholy it must needs come in.” It is full of ache, sorrow, grief, and most other faults, and these traits are most developed in old women and best illustrated by witches. The children of old men are rarely of good temperament and are especially liable to depression. He expatiates most fully upon the tragedy of old men and young wives, and gives many long incidents of jealousy and unfaithfulness of women who, although carefully guarded, have made old husbands cuckold. This is often worse in dotards, who become effeminate, cannot endure absence from their wives, etc. On this theme he elaborates for many pages, with scores of incidents from literature and history.

Jonathan Swift[76] describes the Struldbruggs or immortals whom he met in a far country. They were distinguished by being born with a red circle over the left eye, which changed in color and grew in size with age. These beings, he thought, must be a great blessing, and he described to those who had first told him of them what he would do were it his great good fortune to be born a Struldbrugg. First of all, he would amass wealth so that in two hundred years he would be the richest man in the realm. Next he would apply himself to learning, which in the course of time would make him wisest of all men. Then he would note all events and become a living treasury of knowledge and the oracle of the nation. He would be able to warn rising generations against all impending evils and thus prevent degeneration.

Having heard his ideals, he was told that in fact the state of these immortals was very different; indeed, so pitiful was it that their example mitigated the universal desire to live, so that death was no longer the greatest evil but, on the contrary, undue prolongation of life was a far greater one. The Struldbruggs acted like mortals till about thirty, then grew melancholy until four-score, when they had “not only the follies and infirmities of other old men but had many more which arose from the dreadful prospects of never dying.” “They were not only opinionative, peevish, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren.” “Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passion, but the objects against which their envy seems principally directed are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure, and whenever they see a funeral they lament and repine that others are gone to a harbor of rest to which they themselves can never hope to arrive.” “They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle age and even that is very imperfect, and for the truth or particulars of any fact it is safer to depend on the common traditions than upon their best recollections.” “The less miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage and entirely lose their memories; they meet with more pity and assistance because they lack many bad qualities which abound in others.” If they marry one of their own kind, the marriage is dissolved as soon as the younger comes to be four-score, for they “should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.”